Thomas Huxley Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• My business is to teach my aspirations to confirm themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonize with my aspirations.

  Thomas Huxley

  Integrity, Trying, Facts

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Henrietta A. Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and reflections”

  22 Copy quote

• The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their friends hope or their foes fear.

  Thomas Huxley

  Political, Liberty, Politics

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.425, Cambridge University Press

  14 Copy quote

• Common sense is science exactly in so far as it fulfills the ideal of common sense; that is, sees facts as they are, or at any rate, without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgment. And science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Common Sense, Sound

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1920). “An Introduction to the Study of Zoology”, Concept Publishing Company

  10 Copy quote

• The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Sin, Blunders

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.277, University of Georgia Press

  9 Copy quote

• Can any one deny that the old Israelites conceived Jahveh not only in the image of a man, but in that of a changeable, irritable, and, occasionally, violent man?

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Violent Man, Violent

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1967). “The Essence of T. H. Huxley: Selections Form His Writings”

  4 Copy quote

• Veracity is the heart of morality.

  Thomas Huxley

  Truth, Honesty, Heart

  Leonard Huxley, Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.123, Cambridge University Press

  8 Copy quote

• In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, May, Matter

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.272, University of Georgia Press

  9 Copy quote

• Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.

  Thomas Huxley

  Brother, Equality, Human Equality

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1901). “Collected Essays”

  10 Copy quote

• A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric.

  Thomas Huxley

  Real, Science, Men

  Quoted in Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (1900)

  9 Copy quote

• Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty, and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady.

  Thomas Huxley

  Inspirational, Real, Self

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.257, Cambridge University Press

  65 Copy quote

• Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to apes to monkeys to lemurs] - leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had forseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.

  Thomas Huxley

  Intelligent, Men, Animal

  8 Copy quote

• I have always been, am, and propose to remain a mere scholar. All that I have ever proposed to myself is to say, this and this I have learned; thus and thus have I learned it; go thou and learn better; but do not thrust on my shoulders the responsibility for your own laziness if you elect to take, on my authority, conclusions the value of which you ought to have tested for yourself.

  Thomas Huxley

  Education, Responsibility, Learning

  5 Copy quote

• Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but people and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.

  Thomas Huxley

  Education, Moving, Law

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1880). “On the Origin of Species; Or, The Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature. A Course of Six Lectures ...”

  8 Copy quote

• Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.

  Thomas Huxley

  Trust, Time, Truth

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.255, Cambridge University Press

  14 Copy quote

• What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Men, Wages

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.287, Cambridge University Press

  5 Copy quote

• Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that man is in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech whereby he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of individual life in other animals; so that he now stands raised above it as on a mountain-top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

  Thomas Huxley

  Humble, Animal, Men

  1880 Man's Place in Nature.

  13 Copy quote

• The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.

  Thomas Huxley

  Animal, Miracle, Development

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.29, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

• I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.

  Thomas Huxley

  Wise, Thinking, Vanity

  "Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest". Book by Adrian Desmond (p. 84), 1997.

  53 Copy quote

• Agnosticism is not properly described as a "negative" creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the validity of a principle which is as much ethical as intellectual.

  Thomas Huxley

  Intellectual, Principles, Negative

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Lectures and Essays”, p.247, tredition

  7 Copy quote

• I hated tobacco. I could have almost lent my support to any institution that had for its object the putting of tobacco smokers to death...I now feel that smoking in moderation is a comfortable and laudable practice, and is productive of good. There is no more harm in a pipe than in a cup of tea. You may poison yourself by drinking too much green tea, and kill yourself by eating too many beefsteaks. For my part, I consider that tobacco, in moderation, is a sweetener and equalizer of the temper.

  Thomas Huxley

  Drinking, Practice, Support

  16 Copy quote

• The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable posession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is a man who has so much as to be out of danger?

  Thomas Huxley

  Real, Believe, Knowledge

  'Collected Essays' vol. 3 (1895) 'On Elementary Instruction in Physiology' (written 1877)

  11 Copy quote

• For these two years I have been gravitating towards your doctrines, and since the publication of your primula paper with accelerated velocity. By about this time next year I expect to have shot past you, and to find you pitching into me for being more Darwinian than yourself. However, you have set me going, and must just take the consequences, for I warn you I will stop at no point so long as clear reasoning will take me further.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, Past, Years

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1908). “Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley, by His Son, Leonard Huxley”

  16 Copy quote

• No one can help another very much in these crises of life; but love and sympathy count for something.

  Thomas Huxley

  Helping, Crisis

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Leonard Huxley (1900). “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley”

  4 Copy quote

• Deduction, which takes us from the general proposition to facts again-teaches us, if I may so say, to anticipate from the ticket what is inside the bundle.

  Thomas Huxley

  Science, May, Facts

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.83

  4 Copy quote

• Books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.

  Thomas Huxley

  Money, Book, Reading

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.213, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

Page 5 of 12

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin